Enter Kirk. Kirk is exactly the person who I want downloading my themes. After downloading and playing with one of my themes (blog.txt to be specific), Kirk emails me requesting some support for some specific but discreet task. I help. I’m happy to.

Kirk files tickets on my theme project pages for things that are broken or could be enhanced. Some I accept, some I don’t. He takes both well. I hear from him now and again. A happy user.

Here’s what separates Kirk from most users. Kirk emails me wanting to know how to disable the generator link (”For security,” he asks). Regardless of whether or not I think this improves the security of his blog, I help. I describe the problem and set him off in the right direction.

For this, I make him a simple plugin he can upload based directly on what Peter Westwood documented on his blog. Easy as pie. Took me ten minutes. I slap it into a PHP file and send it along to Kirk knowing he’ll take it from there.

But what Kirk does is, instead of being satisfied after his problem was solved, he shares his experience and provides the solution for others.

Community. Here, here.

Yes, there was one problem with the forums, but I hope that combination of machine and human errors make it easy to forgive me. I’m going to give the forums their long-overdue attention.

I’ve actually gotten quite interested in theme templating recently (as I’ve been redesigning my various sites and moving them too), and I’d like to give this forgotten/unused WordPress feature some attention as well. So I’m moving forward.

(And this now means plaintxt.org is the last site left to be moved. Which means a redesign and revising its content. Ugh.)

There was another significant change. For single posts that are actually attachments, WordPress looks for a template file in the theme directory that makes the abbreviated mime-type. For JPEG image (image/jpeg), WordPress will look for a template file named image.php in the current theme directory. If that file isn’t present, it then looks for attachment.php and then falls back on single.php. So each theme includes a new file, image.php. The general attachment file remains and was modified accordingly.

For Sandboxers, the relevant revisions from version 1.5 to just-released version 1.5.2 are 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, and253. That’s your changelog for the most part. Enjoy the themes.

Barthelme, blog.txt, plaintxtBlog, Simplr, and veryplaintxt have been upgraded to version 4.5. The upgrade for each theme includes gravatar support, i.e., get_avatar(), and prettifying theme options menus with the new WordPress 2.5 design scheme.

Most of the revisions are under the hood, so users are unlikely to notice any cosmetic differences. The theme options menus now each use wp_nonce_field() and filter content much aggressively than before. So users should rest easy that they’re using secure, stable themes. I mean, these things are each almost two years old.

The Sandbox has also received an update, which is necessary since its inclusion with the core has been pushed back (again) to WordPress 2.6. So be it. Anyhow, the Sandbox now has some improvements to its semantic classes, including new classes for parent and child pages.

As always, I encourage everyone to have a look, give them a spin, and feel free to come back with any comments, suggestions. Enjoy.

This means if you using the Sandbox /trunk/ with WordPress 2.3.x and you svn up, well, you’re going to get some errors. Apologies.

There are also a number of new classes for the body: body.page-parent, body.page-child. My favorite new class, though, is the new .untagged class for posts without tags. So far WordPress hasn’t provided a good way to search for untagged posts. Well, add .untagged { color: red; } and you’ll figure out quickly which posts are untagged. Crude, but fun.

I’m quite excited about the use of get_avatar and much richer hCards for commentators. You’ll now see the appropriate use of a.url for commentators with links and img.photo with avatars.

I also looked at how to best use the new is_front_page() function. There has always been a body.home class, so now I had to differentiate .home and, well, something else.

So right now we have is_front_page() producing body.home and is_home() producing body.blog. As the front page will be the, er, home page, and the home page will be the page with blog posts.

So chew on that sentence and then figure it out.

So what’s new with the latest version? Mainly it now features several localizations, including Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Italian, and Norwegian. I’d like to add more languages, so I’m hoping there are some international users out there willing to help translate. Please.

For those of you interested in a precise changelog, I’m happy that Google Code has stepped up and is offering a much better UI. Much better. So you can browse the repository online and check out exactly what is new.

Special thanks to Kjell Knudsen for providing the Norwegian translation and the sandbox.pot file. Nokao has been kind enough to provide the Italian translation.

Download Sandbox 1.3 RC1

Subversion users can get the latest version from the Sandbox SVN:
svn checkout http://sandbox-theme.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Kjell was kind enough to provide an outline on how to help translate on the Sandbox project home, Sandbox in Your Language.

When you have your .MO and .PO files ready to submit, just open a ticket on the Sandbox project home and I’ll email you for the files.

Thanks! And I’m excited to be opening up the Sandbox to a wider audience—the non-English speaking world. A much wider audience.

Issue 48 resolves the stripping of whitespace in sandbox_globalnav(), the list of pages that occurs in header.php. Thanks to Adam.

Issue 49 resolves a problem with the new wp_link_pages() function parsing incorrectly.

Issue 51 fixes an i18n problem with translation of the text “and tagged” in single.php and attachment.php. Thanks to Lloyd.

Enjoy your holidays.

Alister Cameron, WordCamp Melbourne (video permalink)